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Topic: Is Janan Sawa a Legend? (Read 5251 times)

No he's NOT a legend... Not even close to be anywhere in that category. I totally agree that he has a place and purpose...You wouldn't want to play Ashur's songs in a wedding. I mean you could but eventually you want that sheikhani and khiga and so on and so forth. Janan serves that purpose very well. All I hear is zourna/Turkish/Arabic strings without much creativity. He's no inspiration to me at all. How many songs does he have that can actually be arranged and played with a real orchestra?

If you disagree, please do post his best 5 songs. I would love to check out their melodic and harmonic content.

No he's NOT a legend... Not even close to be anywhere in that category. I totally agree that he has a place and purpose...You wouldn't want to play Ashur's songs in a wedding. I mean you could but eventually you want that sheikhani and khiga and so on and so forth. Janan serves that purpose very well. All I hear is zourna/Turkish/Arabic strings without much creativity. He's no inspiration to me at all. How many songs does he have that can actually be arranged and played with a real orchestra?

If you disagree, please do post his best 5 songs. I would love to check out their melodic and harmonic content.

Ashur IS a LEGEND indeed! This man has real musical content for sure.

Very well said.

My only favourite Janan song is Zerineh from his 1987 album. And it's still quite Kurdish influenced.

Yep! Basically a kurdish song. The main melody is 8 bars long and gets repeated over and over for like 5 minutes. Entire song comes down to this: 0:36 - 0:48

It's probably a fun folk song so obviously you don't expect an extensive melody from the original idea....but that's exactly when artistry and musicianship comes in. It's what you can do with that melody. I don't really see a difference between his party songs and album recordings. I'm not trying to offend anyone though...Just thinking out loud.

Yep! Basically a kurdish song. The main melody is 8 bars long and gets repeated over and over for like 5 minutes. Entire song comes down to this: 0:36 - 0:48

It's probably a fun folk song so obviously you don't expect an extensive melody from the original idea....but that's exactly when artistry and musicianship comes in. It's what you can do with that melody. I don't really see a difference between his party songs and album recordings. I'm not trying to offend anyone though...Just thinking out loud.

It does use a looped chord progression. But I gotta that its chords are really interesting, reminiscent of the Dorian mode. The song continuously alters between D major chord and D minor at the beginning of its verses (common in Assyrian music for some reason, simultaneously altering the minor fourth chord to a major chord), where it then ultimately goes back to the root key of A minor. It's like Dorian mode with added "colour" (since A Dorian doesn't have an F major chord).